 is a method of transmitting information from

one place to another by sending light through

an optical fiber.
 The light forms an electromagnetic carrier
wave that is modulated to carry information.
The process of communicating using fiber-
optics involves the following basic steps:
 Creating the optical signal using a
transmitter,
 relaying the signal along the fiber, ensuring
that the signal does not become too distorted
or weak,
 and receiving the optical signal and
converting it into an electrical signal.
Electromagnetic Spectrum
 1880 – Alexander Graham Bell
 1930 – Patents on tubing
 1950 – Patent for two-layer glass wave-guide
 1960 – Laser first used as light source
 1965 – High loss of light discovered
 1970s – Refining of manufacturing process
 1980s – OF technology becomes backbone of long
distance telephone networks in NA.
 An optical fiber (or fibre) is a glass or plastic
fiber that carries light along its length.

 Light is kept in the "core" of the optical fiber

by total internal reflection.
 Thinner
 Less Expensive
 Higher Carrying
Capacity
 Less Signal
Degradation& Digital
Signals
 Light Signals
 Non-Flammable
 Light Weight
 Much Higher Bandwidth (Gbps) - Thousands of
channels can be multiplexed together over one
strand of fiber
 Immunity to Noise - Immune to electromagnetic
interference (EMI).
 Safety - Doesn’t transmit electrical signals,
making it safe in environments like a gas
pipeline.
 High Security - Impossible to “tap into.”
 Less Loss - Repeaters can be spaced 75 miles
apart (fibers can be made to have only 0.2
dB/km of attenuation)
 Reliability - More resilient than copper in
extreme environmental conditions.
 Size - Lighter and more compact than copper.
 Flexibility - Unlike impure, brittle glass, fiber is
physically very flexible.
 greater capacity (bandwidth up
to 2 Gbps, or more)
 smaller size and lighter weight
 lower attenuation
 immunity to environmental
interference
 highly secure due to tap
difficulty and lack of signal
radiation

10
 Disadvantages include
the cost of interfacing
equipment necessary
to convert electrical
signals to optical
signals. (optical
transmitters, receivers)
Splicing fiber optic
cable is also more
difficult.
 expensive over short distance
 requires highly skilled installers
 adding additional nodes is difficult

12
 Telecommunications
 Local Area Networks
 Cable TV
 CCTV
 Optical Fiber Sensors
 relatively new transmission medium used by telephone
companies in place of long-distance trunk lines
 also used by private companies in implementing local
data networks
 require a light source with injection laser diode (ILD) or
light-emitting diodes (LED)
 fiber to the desktop in the future

14
 Optical fiber consists of a core, cladding, and
a protective outer coating, which guides light
along the core by total internal reflection.
Core – thin glass center of the
fiber where light travels.
Cladding – outer optical
material surrounding the core
Buffer Coating – plastic
coating that protects
the fiber.
 The core, and the lower-refractive-index
cladding, are typically made of high-quality
silica glass, though they can both be made of
plastic as well.
 consists of three concentric sections

plastic jacket glass or plastic

fiber core
cladding

19
20
 Contains one or
several glass
fibers at its
core
 Surrounding
the fibers is a
layer of glass
called cladding
3 TYPES OF OPTICAL FIBERS

1. Plastic core and cladding

2. Glass core with plastic
cladding ( called PCS
fiber- Plastic Clad Silica )
3. Glass core and glass
cladding ( called SCS -
Silica Clad Silica )
 Photons (light “particles”)
light represented by tiny bundles of energy
(or quanta), following straight line paths
along the rays.
PLANCK’S LAW

Ep =hf
Where,

Ep – energy of the photon (joules)

h = Planck’s constant = 6.625 x 10 -34 J-s
f – frequency o f light (photon) emitted (hertz)
 Let medium 1 be glass ( n1 = 1.5 ) and medium
2 by ethyl alcohol (n2 = 1.36 ). For an angle of
incidence of 30°, determine the angle of
refraction.

 Answer: 33.47°
 The minimum angle of incidence at which a
light ray ay strike the interface of two media
and result in an angle of refraction of 90° or
greater.
 The maximum angle in which external light
rays may strike the air/glass interface and still
propagate down the fiber.
 θin (max) = sin-1

 Where,
 θin (max) – acceptance angle (degrees)
 n1 – refractive index of glass fiber core (1.5)
 n2 – refractive index of quartz fiber cladding
( 1.46 )
 Core and cladding with
different indices of refraction

Core-cladding boundary
 Used to describe the light-gathering or light-
collecting ability of an optical fiber.
 In optics, the numerical aperture (NA) of an
optical system is a dimensionless number
that characterizes the range of angles over
which the system can accept or emit light
The numerical aperture in
respect to a point P depends
on the half-angle θ of the
maximum cone of light that
can enter or exit the lens.
 Two main categories of
optical fiber used in
fiber optic
communications are
multi-mode optical
fiber and single-mode
optical fiber.
 Single-mode fibers – used to transmit one
signal per fiber (used in telephone and cable
TV). They have small cores(9 microns in
diameter) and transmit infra-red light from
laser.
 Single-mode fiber’s smaller core (<10
micrometres) necessitates more expensive
components and interconnection methods,
but allows much longer, higher-performance
links.
 Multi-mode fibers – used to transmit many
signals per fiber (used in computer networks).
They have larger cores(62.5 microns in
diameter) and transmit infra-red light from
LED.
 Multimode fiber has a
larger core (≥ 50
micrometres), allowing
less precise, cheaper
transmitters and
receivers to connect to it
as well as cheaper
connectors.
 However, multi-mode fiber introduces
multimode distortion which often limits the
bandwidth and length of the link.
Furthermore, because of its higher dopant
content, multimode fiber is usually more
expensive and exhibits higher attenuation.
 The index profile of an optical fiber is a
graphical representation of the magnitude of
the refractive index across the fiber.
 The refractive index is plotted on the
horizontal axis, and the radial distance from
the core axis is plotted on the vertical axis.
 The boundary
between the core
and cladding may
either be abrupt, in
step-index fiber, or
gradual, in graded-
index fiber.
 A step-index fiber has a central core with a
uniform refractive index. An outside cladding
that also has a uniform refractive index
surrounds the core;
 however, the refractive index of the cladding
is less than that of the central core.
 In graded-index fiber, the index of refraction
in the core decreases continuously between
the axis and the cladding. This causes light
rays to bend smoothly as they approach the
cladding, rather than reflecting abruptly from
the core-cladding boundary.
 multimode step-index fiber
 the reflective walls of the fiber move the light pulses to
the receiver
 multimode graded-index fiber
 acts to refract the light toward the center of the fiber
by variations in the density
 single mode fiber
 the light is guided down the center of an extremely
narrow core

53
 Single-mode
fiber
 Carries light
pulses along
single path
 Multimode fiber
 Many pulses of
light generated
by LED travel at
different angles
fiber optic multimode
step-index

fiber optic multimode

graded-index

fiber optic single mode

55
 light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

 laser diodes
 LEDs produce incoherent light

 laser diodes produce coherent light.

 LED is a forward-biased p-n junction,
emitting light through spontaneous emission,
a phenomenon referred to as
electroluminescence.
 The emitted light is incoherent with a
relatively wide spectral width of 30-60 nm.
 LED light transmission is also inefficient, with only
about 1 % of input power, or about 100 microwatts,
eventually converted into «launched power» which
has been coupled into the optical fiber.
 However, due to their relatively simple design, LEDs
are very useful for low-cost applications.
 Communications LEDs are most commonly made
from gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP) or gallium
arsenide (GaAs)
 Because GaAsP LEDs operate at a longer
wavelength than GaAs LEDs (1.3 micrometers vs.
0.81-0.87 micrometers), their output spectrum is
wider by a factor of about 1.7.
 LEDs are suitable primarily for local-area-network
applications with bit rates of 10-100 Mbit/s and
transmission distances of a few kilometers.
 LEDs have also been developed that use several
quantum wells to emit light at different
wavelengths over a broad spectrum, and are
currently in use for local-area WDM networks.
 A semiconductor laser emits light through
stimulated emission rather than spontaneous
emission, which results in high output power
(~100 mW) as well as other benefits related to
the nature of coherent light.
 The output of a laser is relatively directional,
allowing high coupling efficiency (~50 %) into
single-mode fiber. The narrow spectral width also
allows for high bit rates since it reduces the effect of
chromatic dispersion. Furthermore, semiconductor
lasers can be modulated directly at high frequencies
because of short recombination time.
 Laser diodes are often directly modulated,
that is the light output is controlled by a
current applied directly to the device.
 The main component of an optical receiver is
a photodetector that converts light into
electricity through the photoelectric effect.
 The photodetector is typically a
semiconductor-based photodiode, such as a
p-n photodiode, a p-i-n photodiode, or an
avalanche photodiode.
 Metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM)
photodetectors are also used due to their
suitability for circuit integration in
regenerators and wavelength-division
multiplexers.
 10-1

10-5 PIN
Bit Error Rate

APD
10-9

10-13

10-17

-60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0

Average Received Optical Power (dBm)
Band Description Wavelength Range

O band original 1260 to 1360 nm

E band extended
1360 to 1460 nm

S band short wavelengths 1460 to 1530 nm

C band conventional ("erbium 1530 to 1565 nm

window")

L band long wavelengths 1565 to 1625 nm

U band 1625 to 1675 nm

Ultra-long wavelengths
 Two popular connectors used with fiber-optic cable:
 ST connectors
 SC connectors
 Long Haul Fiber System Overview
• Types of Systems
• Pulse quality
• Bit Error Rate
• Noise
Metro
CATV
Long Haul

Metro
Access

Metro

Submarine networks

73 OPT 471A © Russell A. Chipman